EXCLUSIVE: HBO’s movie about Bernie Madoff starring Robert De Niro as the disgraced financier is gaining momentum with the hire of Reservation Road scribe John Burnham Schwartz to write the script. HBO started the process in May when it optioned Diane Henriques’ non-fiction book The Wizard Of Lies: Bernie Madoff And The Death Of Trust, which is recounting the life of the imprisoned swindler and the $65 billion Ponzi scheme he concocted, and began negotiations with De Niro to play the lead. Now the high-profile project is moving to the next stage with ICM-repped Schwartz set to write a script based on Henriques’ book and additional source material I heard HBO is in the process of acquiring.